What He Desires (What He Wants, Book Five) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

“You put a stop to it by asking her how
she tasted? That doesn’t sound like putting a stop to it, Noah.”
 
I took another sip of water, hating the
way I sounded.
 
I sounded like a
jealous girlfriend.
 
The issue here
wasn’t supposed to be whether or not Noah was fucking Katie.
 
It was supposed to be whether or not he
murdered her.

“I flirted with her a bit,” he said.
 
“It was six months ago, Charlotte.
 
And that’s as far as it got.
 
A couple of dirty
emails.
 
If you’d kept
reading the chain, you’d see that was it.
 
It didn’t even span a week or even a few days.
 
It was over in a couple of hours.”

I swallowed.
 
“I’m not… you still lied.”

“You asked me if I had a relationship
with her, and I said no.
 
It was
the truth.”
 
He made a motion with
his hand, like it was nothing, like he couldn’t believe I was getting so worked
up over something so trivial.

“Stop doing that!” I said, pounding my
hand down on the table.
 
“Stop
acting like anything I feel means nothing!”

I expected him to soften, to try and
comfort me or convince me, but my words had the opposite effect.
 
They seemed to make him angry.

“Is that what you think I’m doing,
Charlotte?” he demanded.
 
“You
think I’m acting like how you feel means nothing?
 
How do you think it makes me feel when you accuse me over
and over again of lying to you?
 
Why do you think I’m here right now, trying to convince you
that I haven’t done anything wrong?”
 

“I think if you wanted to convince me,
you could just tell me the truth.”

“I did just tell you the truth!” he said,
his voice raising now.
 
“I told you
those were just some emails sent months ago, before I even knew you.”

“And the pictures of her in your file
folder?
 
How do you explain those?”

He sighed.
 
“Those weren’t taken by me.
 
They were taken by a private investigator
who
I hired to follow her.”

“And why were you following her?”

“Because I thought she was leaking
information to someone on a case.”

I frowned.
 
“I don’t understand.”

“I thought she was giving the district
attorney information about a client I was representing,” he said.
 
“And I was having her followed to see
if I could catch her.”

“And was she?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful!” I said.
 
“Means, opportunity, and now motive.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Do you see how this looks to me, Noah?”
I asked.
 
“Do you see how all of
this looks?
 
You keep everything
inside,
you keep everything secret and hidden.
 
I’m a logical person, and when I start
looking at everything logically, there’s really no way to believe anything
else.”

“So you lied to me when you said you
trusted me.”

“I
want
to trust you, Noah, but
every single thing that happens points to you being a liar and probably a
killer.
 
So how can I?”

“That’s what trust is, Charlotte.
 
Believing someone when the evidence
points otherwise.”

“Yeah, well, do you see how hard that
might be for me?” I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. “Do you see how
that might not be that easy?
 
And
do you see how you might be making it even harder?”

He balled up his napkin and threw it onto
the table.
 
“I’m
not making this easier for
you?
 
How do you think it felt, Charlotte, having to give my email passwords
over to Worthington?
 
How do you
think it felt when Nora died?
 
Do
you think any of this has been easy for me, Charlotte?
 
I’m doing the fucking best I can.”

His voice was laced with pain and anger,
and I felt the emotions swirling around in my chest, threatening to take over
the logical part of my brain, the part that was telling me I should walk out of
here and never speak to him again.

“No,” I said quietly.
 
“I don’t think this has been easy on
you.
 
I’m just trying to explain to
you how I feel.
 
And how would I
have known any of that?
 
About why you were following Katie?
 
You don’t tell me anything, Noah.
 
You don’t let me in.”

The waiter returned then, setting our
food down in front of us.
 
A
perfectly cooked filet mignon with a skewer of shrimp drizzled with a rich
lobster cream sauce.
 
It was all
expertly plated, the food arranged just so around a scoop of quinoa and kale
salad. It was beautiful, and I had no appetite.

“Compliments of the owner,” the waiter
said, pulling out an expensive-looking bottle of red and pouring Noah and me
each a glass.

“Thank you, Graham,” Noah said, his voice
even.
 
I marveled at his ability to
go from seemingly about to lose it to being calm and in control.

“See?” I pressed as soon as Graham was
gone.
 
“Do you see?”

“Do I see what, Charlotte?”
 
He’d folded his hands in his lap,
seemingly not hungry, either.

“Do you see how hard it becomes to
believe you?
 
You were just about
to get upset, and then the waiter comes in and you’re somehow able to tamp that
down, like it’s nothing.”

“And you think this makes me a killer?”

“I think it makes you a person who’s able
to turn their emotions on and off.”

“And this makes me a bad person?”

“Stop trying to talk to me like a
lawyer!”
 
I said, balling my fists
up in my lap and struggling to keep control of my emotions.
 
I took a sip of the wine Graham had set
in front of me, hoping it might take the edge off my nerves.
 
It was smooth and crisp going down, and
I took another big gulp, letting the alcohol warm me as it moved down my
throat.

“Then stop interrogating me like one,” he
said.
 
He sighed and leaned
forward.
 
“Look, did you ever stop
to think that maybe the fact that I’m able to hide my emotions isn’t some deep
character flaw or personality disorder?
 
That maybe it’s something I’ve had to learn to do to survive?”

“No!” I said.
 
“No, I haven’t ever stopped to think about that, because
you’ve never told me that.
 
You’ve
never told me anything.”

“And I explained to you why that is.”

“No, you haven’t.”
 
My voice was rising, and I realized how
ridiculously absurd it was to be having a conversation like this in such a
fancy restaurant, with a bottle of wine that probably cost more than my rent
sitting in front of me, with a delicious meal set out in front of us.
 
It was a perfect metaphor for what was
going on between us – everything was supposed to be perfect, I
wanted
everything to be perfect, but everything
was so broken beneath the surface that it was impossible.

“Yes, Charlotte, I
have
explained it to you.
 
I’ve told you about my difficulties
when it comes to getting close to people.”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“All you’ve said is that you have a hard time getting close to people,
because you’ve lost people.
 
You
never told me how you lost people, or what happened to make you the way you
are.”

His eyes blazed a warning to me across
the table, telling me not to go there.
 
I was pushing him, and he didn’t like it.
 
But I was past the point of caring.
 
Why should I have had to let my guard down
with him, push all my barriers down sexually and emotionally, while he could
just decide something was too much for him and shut me out?

“What happened to you when you were
younger, Noah?” I asked.
 
“What’s
in your juvenile record?”

If he was surprised I knew about it, he
didn’t show it.
 
“I’m not
discussing that, Charlotte.”

“Yes, you are!” I said.
 
“You’re going to discuss it if you
expect me to be able to help you.”

“You think I want your help?
 
Like I’m so damaged that I need you to
save me?
 
You think I’m that fucked
up, Charlotte?”

“No!” I said.
 
“But I wouldn’t know, because you won’t tell me anything.”

“What do you want me to say?” he asked,
pushing his chair back from the table angrily and jumping to his feet.
 
“You want me to tell you what’s in that
record?
 
How I got arrested for
assault when I was seventeen?
 
How
my father was beating my mother up so bad that I had to take a bat to his
knees?
 
That I broke the
motherfucker’s
knees,
Charlotte, that
he ended up in the hospital?
 
That
my mother and brother both turned on me, protected my father, said it wasn’t
self-defense?
 
Do you want to hear
about that shit, Charlotte?
 
Because I sure as fuck don’t want to talk about it.”

He grabbed the table and picked it up,
then dropped it, slamming it against the floor angrily.
 
Water sloshed out of his glass, and my
wine tipped over, spilling all over the tablecloth, leaving an angry red stain.

But Noah didn’t stop.
 
He picked up the table and dropped it
again.
And again.
 
And again.

I flinched each time it hit the floor,
flinched each time the sound echoed through the room.
 
When he was done, he stood there, breathing heavily, and I
could see the anguish in his eyes.

It was different than the other times
he’d let his guard down in front of me.
 
This was more raw, more real, the pain of a man who’d done his best to
cover up his sins and bad memories at all costs.

“Noah,” I said.
 
“I didn’t – ”

“Don’t,” he said.
 
And then he was walking away from the
table toward the back of the restaurant, disappearing down the hallway.

I sat there for a moment, not realizing I
was crying until I felt a tear hit my lips and tasted the salt.
 
I took in a shuddering breath, then
stood up and moved toward the back hall.

There were two heavy oak doors off the
corridor,
one of them marked W and one marked M.
 

I stood in front of the men’s room and
put my ear to the door.
 
I could
hear the faint sound of water running. I tried the knob, but it was
locked.
 

I knocked.
 
“Noah?” I asked.
 
“Are you okay?”

There was no answer, and I knocked again,
louder this time.
 
“Noah!”

Still no answer.

The water shut off, but the door didn’t
open.

“Please,” I called.
 
“I’m sorry I pushed you.”

A second later, the knob turned, and Noah
appeared.
 
His eyes met mine, the two
of us just staring at each other.
 
I felt powerfully connected to him, even though we’d just had a fight,
if you could even call it that.

He didn’t say anything, just stared at
me.
 

I felt like I was hanging on the edge of
a cliff, ready to fall off and head down into the canyon below.
 
I felt like I could save myself if I
just knew what to say.

You do know what to say.

I swallowed.
 
“I need to be punished,” I said softly.

He raised his chin, his eyes
questioning.
 

“I should have trusted you,” I said,
reaching out and touching his arm softly.
 
“I want to trust you.”

He opened the door and I slipped inside.

He shut the door and locked it, the click
of the bolt echoing through the silent room.
 
I thought of the waiters and waitresses out there, coming back
to our table to see if we needed anything else.
 
They’d find Noah and I gone, our table a mess of spilled
wine and disheveled silverware.